The English Past Simple Tense

The Past Simple

 The past simple is the tense that is used to talk about actions that ended and no longer in progress; such as things that happened yesterday, the day before, last week, last month, last year etc….

Verbs that are in the past can be either regular or irregular verbs. Each verb has it’s own spelling rule to follow.

In this booklet  we will learn how to deal with the past simple and how to form it.

The positive form:

By saying positive we mean that the action acctually happened:

EX.  I ate a cake yesterday

Ex.  She watched a movie last night 

The form:                             {regular Or irregular verb}

                                                               ⇑

                   subject + past tense verb+ complement

                      ⇓                                               ⇓

          {nouns Or pronouns}              {time expresstions}

                                                  {objects Or other statments}

The negative form:

By saying negative we mean that the action did not happen. To form a negative sentence we have to add the helping verb did (the past form of do) with not. We must pay attention that by using did the main verb returns to base form. [did not= didn’t]

EX.  I ate a cake yesterday ⇒ I did not eat a cake yesterday     

Ex.  She watched a movie last night ⇒ She didn’t watch a movie last night

Forming Questions in Past Simple:

When forming questions in past simple,we have to use the helping verb {did}.

yes/no questions:

Did + subject + Base verb + complement ?

Did you invite her to the party?   Yes, I did.     No, I didn’t.

Wh- word +did  + subject + Base verb + complement ?

When did she invite them to her party?  She invited them this morning.

Who + past simle verb + complement ?

Who went with you?      My parents went with me.

The irregular verbs:

Irregular verbs are verbs that have their own special form when forming in the past tense. Those verbs DO NOT  follow the spelling rules we mentioned, each of those verbs have it’s own spelling with no special rule to follow.

Hereby attached the link to the expanded list of the irregular verbs:

http://www.englishpage.com/irregularverbs/irregularverbs2.html

Exercises:

https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/simple-past

http://www.agendaweb.org/verbs/past_simple-exercises.html

http://www.grammarbank.com/simple-past-tense-exercises.html